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Oh Irony of Ironies!

Manhattan is about to be besieged by wind turbines and the residents are none to happy about it…

From Manhattan Local News — February 29, 2012:

UPPER EAST SIDE — Imagine if New York City was completely transformed into an eco-friendly paradise with rooftops dotted with wind turbines, greenhouses and solar panels and building facades outfitted with energy-efficient insulation and special shade structures over windows.

The Bloomberg administration hopes to promote these types of projects under a new zoning amendment, which was the subject of a City Planning Commission public hearing Wednesday. It would lift previous constraints to allow for the construction and retrofitting of green buildings.

But some preservationist-minded residents on the Upper East Side fear that the proposed changes could mar the character of their neighborhood.

“I’m all for the environment,” Elizabeth Ashby, a member of Community Board 8, said at a recent City Planning presentation of the “zone green” text amendment. “But I’m worried this is a license to create an eyesore.”

Many expressed concern over the possibility of wind turbines, which would be allowed to rise 55 feet above rooftops on buildings taller than 100 feet, as long as they are set back at least 10 feet from the property line.

“What about the noise?” asked Community Board 8 member Michele Birnbaum. “That’s such a visual blight.”

It’s unlikely that the historic townhouse-lined blocks of the Upper East Side would become havens for wind turbines. City officials said that landmark rules would still apply, which means that any applications in those swaths would have to pass muster from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

City officials noted that wind energy makes the most sense where the winds are consistent, which tends to be on taller buildings and nearer the waterfront. — Read more: Complete story

Let’s all hope that Toronto is next in line. Then we will start to hear an uproar like we haven’t heard in a while. How ironic that people, living in a New York borough with a population of 1.5 million, amidst concrete buildings hundreds of feet high, are worried that putting wind turbines on top of those buildings will take away from the “character” of the neighborhood.

Welcome to our world! No one wants the lifestyle they’ve chosen to be inundated with unwanted, unnecessary, noisy wind structures. People who live in the country have chosen to do so, to get away from “concrete jungles”. Those living in cities, also, usually have chosen that particular location because they like the looks of their neighborhood.

None of us should be bullied into having these hideous monstrosities shoved down our throat. It’s so easy for people living in Toronto, Mississauga, Scarborough, etc. to accuse rural residents of being selfish, anti-earth, anti-environment, etc. and that the only reason we don’t want to live next to wind turbines is pure Nimbyism (a term, by the way, that I despise and am getting really sick of hearing) and that all perceived health problems associated with IWT’s are all in our minds, plus we’re just ‘jealous’ because we’re not the ones making money off of the F-I-T program.

I’d love to see if they’re so quick to embrace these goliaths when it comes to their backyard. I have a feeling the outcry would be just as loud as in Manhattan. Absolute hypocritical environmentalists who expect everyone else to make the sacrifice for “their” cause, but are unwilling to do the same when it comes time for them to fall on the sword.

I would truly snicker, if the next provincial government halted all rural turbine construction and focussed their attention on the larger metropolitan areas for all future ‘green’ programs. It would be fun to sit back and watch them all scramble. — Donna Quixote